Fantasy Football: Start or Sit Dwayne Allen in Week 4?

Dwayne Allen has been barely heard from after a week one performance that saw him hauling in 4-of-6 targets for 53 yards and a score, and fantasy football owners have been left scratching their heads wondering where he’s gone wrong. When Coby Fleener left Indianapolis, many people anticipated that Allen would get the lion’s share of the target volume vacated by Fleener’s departure. In actuality, Fleener re-emerged under the alias “Jack Doyle.”

Doyle will be the death of Allen’s fantasy football value this season, and will likely prevent Allen from being able to actualize on the promise of a 2016 breakout campaign. Doyle started as a joke week one when he hauled in two touchdowns; now he’s showing that the joke was on us. So far this season, Doyle and Allen are evenly matched in targets (15), but Doyle has hauled in 13 while Allen has only been able to catch 9 of these passes. They are sharing target volume, but Doyle has been more productive with his catches.

Obviously, this has led to more passing yards for Doyle, who has 137 to Allen’s 113. While Doyle’s yardage production is unlikely to continue, it concerns for Allen owners that he is averaging 1.6 more yards per target this season on an identical number of targets. While this is likely due to his higher number of catches, more catches mean more targets. It’s possible that Doyle’s hands will have Andrew Luck looking his way more this season.

The unfortunate part is that Doyle, for his part, isn’t any more productive than Allen, and hasn’t proven himself as a fantasy football commodity. Instead, he exists solely to sap the fantasy value from Dwayne Allen.

This weekend Doyle will sop up targets that Dwayne Allen’s fantasy football owners hoped were headed his way as they travel to London to take on the Jaguars. The Jaguars this season have shut down the tight end position, and are in the bottom-third in the league regarding fantasy football points allowed on the season to tight ends. This year, the Jags have allowed only 4.87 fantasy points per game to tight ends, holding Antonio Gates and Dennis Pitta in check, in the process. It took a three-target and a score day from Antonio Gates to even get the tight end position up to that putrid points per game.

Tight Ends against Jacksonville are averaging 3.7 receptions per game for 28.7 yards. If TEs aren’t scoring against the Jaguars, and they aren’t getting yards, then the fantasy prospects for Dwayne Allen, who is splitting targets against them this weekend? To quote Mad Men’s Pete Campbell: “Not great, Bob!” Keep him out of your lineups this weekend.

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Works have appeared and featured in places such as Forbes, Huffington Post, ESPN and NBC Sports to name a few. Follow me on Twitter at @RobCobb_INSC, email me at [email protected]